PCPA Presents EMMA Next Month

PCPA presents, Emma, adapted for the stage by Joseph Hanreddy, from the novel by Jane Austen. Romantic misadventures, misplaced confidence, and matchmaking in the town of Highbury.

Join in for the West Coast Premiere and be the first audience to experience Joseph Hanreddy's (PCPA's Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility) charming new adaptation of Jane Austen's beloved novel. Emma plays in the Marian Theatre March 2-19, 2023 and in Solvang Festival Theatre June 22-July 2023.

Emma was commissioned and developed by People's Light Theater, with additional development with and for the Pacific Conservatory Theatre - PCPA. It is the third Jane Austen novel that Joseph Hanreddy has adapted for the stage, in addition to Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility (with J. R. Sullivan) which both have had several productions at major theaters in the US and abroad, included PCPA.

Director Polly Firestone Walker says " I love Jane Austen, and clearly, I am not alone. Her relatively small body of work has spawned countless films, television adaptations, academic explorations, societies, spin-offs, spoofs...the list goes on."

"In Emma, our heroine faces a long journey, despite her kind heart, good fortune, beautiful looks and clever mind. In fact, it is those very gifts that lead to her greatest faults: arrogance, thoughtlessness, and an unshakable belief in everything she thinks. Jane Austen herself wrote that Emma would be a protagonist that "no-one but myself will much like." Yet Miss Austen was mistaken: Emma is beloved by countless readers, as we recognize her mistakes are purely human, the result of her own strong character and a doting father and governess."

"But there is always room for laughter, as all of Austen's works have comedy at their root. It is the laughter of loving recognition at the foibles of humanity: hypochondria, garrulousness, pride, over-familiarity, gossip, mis- communication. The characters that inhabit Highbury may behave ridiculously at times, but never are they caricatures."

The cast features Emily Trask* as Emma, guest and PCPA Alumni Jordan Stidham* as Mr. Knightley , Mark Booher as Mr. Woodhouse, Phoebe DuBois as Mrs. Weston, Andrew Philpot* as Mr. Weston, Julia Mae Abrams as Harriet Smith, George Walker as Mr. Elton, Kitty Balay* as Miss. Bates, Lottie Arnold as Jane Farirfax, and Kennon Hooks as Frank Churchill.